Why does the Sporting code require

Let's say for some reason I had stored in the FR three different
declarations made on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.
As far as I know, it is impossible to have different declarations in
one FR! What you can have is different flight plans, tasks or whatever
you wish to call them. But the only FAI declaration will be the task
you last selected as FAI declaration. The declaration date and hour
will be those of the moment when you made that choice.


--
stephanevdv
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Here is where the confusion gets going. I can have
multiple TASKS stored in my FR. I nominate one of
them as the one to be auto-declared. At takeoff [for
the Colibri] or turn-on [for the Volks] this one TASK
is selected as the current DECLARATION. This selection,
made by the instrument, is the latest valid declaration.
I chose it by having a particular TASK previously
nominated as the one to be declared. That is not necessarily
the last task defined to or loaded into the instrument
- I could choose to have the task I defined on Monday
as the one to be declared, even though I defined another
one on Wednesday.

We seem to agree that the declaration is made when
a task is selected, not when it is defined. [This
is not quite consistent with Marc's opinion that a
paper declaration may prevail if it is written and
signed after the auto-declared electronic task was
loaded into the FR. But who says rules have to be
consistent ?]

Separately, Marc asserts that the OO must be aware
of the paper declaration, since he signed it. What
if it was signed in advance by a different OO from
the one who supervises the FR download ?

My own opinion, for what it's worth but what I'll fly
by, is that if a FR is aboard and has auto-declared
a task, that was my last and only declaration for that
flight.

Ian



At 17:36 16 October 2004, Stephanevdv wrote:

Let's say for some reason I had stored in the FR three
different
declarations made on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

As far as I know, it is impossible to have different
declarations in
one FR! What you can have is different flight plans,
tasks or whatever
you wish to call them. But the only FAI declaration
will be the task
you last selected as FAI declaration. The declaration
date and hour
will be those of the moment when you made that choice.


--
stephanevdv
------------------------------------------------------------------
------
Posted via OziPilots Online [ http://www.OziPilotsOnline.com.au
]
- A website for Australian Pilots regardless of when,
why, or what they fly -

Ian Cant wrote:
We seem to agree that the declaration is made when
a task is selected, not when it is defined. [This
is not quite consistent with Marc's opinion that a
paper declaration may prevail if it is written and
signed after the auto-declared electronic task was
loaded into the FR. But who says rules have to be
consistent ?]

I examined some IGC files from a Volkslogger I had a few years back, and
indeed, the date/time of declaration appears to be either that at which
the unit was turned on or at takeoff (it's hard to tell which, exactly).
If true, this is incorrect behavior with the respect to the
requirements laid out in the IGC technical specifications, and will be
looked into further. Thanks for bringing it to my attention. We will
also look into the Colibri declaration behavior.

Separately, Marc asserts that the OO must be aware
of the paper declaration, since he signed it. What
if it was signed in advance by a different OO from
the one who supervises the FR download ?

I think it is clear that the intent of the Sporting Code is that there
be only one OO for a given flight performance. Of course you can game
the system by having multiple OOs who are unaware of each other, but
that falls in the general category of cheating.

My own opinion, for what it's worth but what I'll fly
by, is that if a FR is aboard and has auto-declared
a task, that was my last and only declaration for that
flight.

This would be true, but it would not happen if your flight recorder was
behaving as specified by the IGC. The 302 I use now, and the GPS-NAV I
had in the past, do not auto-declare tasks (however, the GPS-NAV does
have another known problem with declarations). If there are flight
recorders which are auto-declaring tasks, they need to be fixed...

Marc